Nigel Wray gazes out across his pristine, mud-free artificial pitch in Hendon and, not for the first time in almost two decades as chairman of Saracens, ponders the future of professional rugby union.

"Nobody in their right mind would be in this game to make a profit," he says flatly. "You're in it to do something really special at the weekend. If your ambition is to finish 10th and you're losing money, what's the point?"

It is a fair question, and one that cuts to the heart of the struggle for the soul of European club and provincial rugby. Without generous benefactors like Wray there would be no vibrant, ambitious clubs in England; without underdogs like Connacht, who face Saracens at Allianz Park on Saturday in what could be their final appearance in an elite pan-European tournament, there would be less romance. Something, not for the first time in rugby's eventful modern history, has to give.

Which is why this weekend feels less like the last round of pool matches than the end of rugby's age of innocence. Talk to Wray and he will tell you the row over who runs the Heineken Cup is essentially an irrelevance. What really matters is what television's grand masters want to broadcast and how much they are prepared to pay. "Whether we like it or not I think rugby will go the same way as football without the noughts. Sport is about television, that's the reality. What television wants, that's what goes. And TV wants big games and big competitions."

For this simple reason, Wray reckons the Heineken Cup will shortly leap from its supposed death bed, albeit as a 20-team tournament under different stewardship on a rival network. He admits it would be "a tragedy" if the competition were lost, which will strike some Celtic observers as deeply ironic. Wray, though, cannot understand why the neighbours think the English want to run off with everyone's family silver.

"It's not that we're marvellous. We're not. It's just that there aren't that many people with disposable income who live in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Ask the TV companies. The money they pay is for the 60 million eyeballs in England. That's why the Irish, the Welsh, the Scots and the Italians need England and France."

Wray knows all these arguments by heart. He has been in the vanguard of professional club rugby for 18 years and poured in an estimated £40m of his own money. When people talk about rapacious club owners seeking to line their pockets they forget the flip side. "We all know Premiership rugby loses a lot of money collectively every year," Wray says. "It must be £20m-30m a year. I'm guessing because people will never tell you the truth."

As he freely admits, this cannot be indefinitely sustainable. "When I go, what happens? My family might well say: 'We don't want to do this every year.'" Hence his keen interest in this week's vastly improved French Top 14 deal with Canal+ worth £60m a year. "Clearly the deal they've done must change things because it shows what the rights are worth. My personal view is that TV companies – and there'll be others coming in like Google – will have to pay a lot more. In return we've got to make the game a lot more attractive for them."

If the leading French clubs have even more money to splash around on players' salaries, where does that leave Europe's poorer relations? Wray is adamant the customer will ultimately decide. "He isn't turning up to watch certain games because he's not interested. He wants matches with real bite. When we played in the Amlin and went out to Bucharest we played in front of the same 300 people year after year. Where is the development taking place? We were losing a fortune going there and risking players on rubbish pitches. Something has to change."

The International Rugby Board, however, need not panic. Wray foresees South African sides playing competitive games in the northern hemisphere in 10 years' time but is not interested in cat-stroking, global domination of the entire sport. "If you think I want another headache from running the international game as well as helping to run club sides, forget it. It's a complete nonsense. We're just at the end of the era in which the unions used to tell the clubs what to do. It's the last ebbings of the landlord/serf relationship.

"What other trade is there where you have to get a federation's permission to get an order from Cardiff as opposed to Macclesfield? It's a complete joke."

Meritocratic European qualification for a team like Connacht via the RaboDirect Pro 12 is hardly radical. "This is not aimed at any particular side but you've got to qualify. You can't just stroll in."

There is another ticking issue, though, that may yet overtake all the European squabbling. No compensation package to cover the disruption to the club season during the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England has been finalised and Wray is far from happy. "How on earth can the Rugby Football Union have signed a contract to effectively close down the clubs for two months without the clubs agreeing or being party to the contract? Who's going to pay the bills and wages for two months?"

The RFU and Premiership Rugby insist negotiations are continuing but Wray warns the clubs may have to consider drastic action. "If you've got a gun and you're not prepared to fire it, you haven't got a gun," he says bluntly, when asked if withholding players might be an option. "We don't want to do that but we're being put in a very difficult position. If we say we'll release all the players, the RFU would say: 'Great, we don't have to do anything.' We shouldn't be being put in that position. It's wrong."

Wray also argues "the RFU has got to pay a lot more" to compensate clubs for the use of their leading players. "The professional guys there are not idiots. They understand the commercial pressures and understand they can't tell us what to do." He is equally convinced central contracts would be "a disaster for players" because they would have just one potential employer with a monopoly. At heart, though, he is a fan who simply yearns to see his beloved Sarries in the last eight, irrespective of Euro politics.

"It's only rugby and sport where this rubbish goes on. It should have been sorted out ages ago." Few would argue with him on that score.